The Romans chose a sublime seaside setting for the fabulous Antonine Baths complex, a short walk across the road from the Roman villas. Begun under Hadrian and finished in the 2nd century, it was the largest outside Rome, supplied with water by the great Zaghouan aqueduct. Just the foundations remain, but their size is awesome. A plan and model of the baths above the main complex helps you read the buildings.
A circular caldarium (hot room) was flanked by smaller saunas, and led onto a small tepidarium (warm room) which allowed access to the huge 22m by 42m frigidarium (cold room) at the centre, which had eight colossal pillars. Beyond this was a wonderful, 17.5m by 13.5m, seaside swimming pool, no trace of which remains. Either side of the frigidarium were palestras and gymnasiums, where people could indulge in naked wrestling and other such frisky sports.
A sole 15m-high frigidarium column gives a sense of the sometime height, its capital alone weighing 8 tons, and huge fragments of marble inscription supply a taste of the décor. To the southwest a huge semicircular construction was discovered, with around 80 seats, which archaeologists at first thought a theatre. It turned out to be a large group of communal latrines.
The baths were destroyed by the Vandals doing what they did best in AD 439, and the stone reused by the Arabs during the construction of Tunis.
The shady palm-filled garden contains other remains too, including a tiny early Christian funerary chapel, a cool underground refuge, with some beautiful naïve terracotta tiles showing Biblical scenes. It was moved here from the northern part of Carthage and rebuilt.
